The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches from the Future of English

by Mark Abley

An exhilarating exploration of how the world's languages are likely to transform and be transformed by their speakers

Mark Abley, author of Spoken Here, takes the reader on a global journey like no other—from Singapore to Tokyo, from Oxford to Los Angeles, through the Internet and back in time. As much a travel book as a tour of words at play, The Prodigal Tongue goes beyond grammar and vocabulary to discover how language is irrevocably changing the people of the world in far-reaching ways.
On his travels, Abley encounters bloggers, translators, novelists, therapists, dictionary makers, hip-hop performers, and Web-savvy teens. He talks to a married couple who corresponded passionately online before they met in “meatspace.” And he listens to teenagers, puzzling out the words they coin in chat rooms and virtual worlds.
Everywhere he goes, he asks what the future is likely to hold for the ways we communicate. Abley balances a traditional concern for honesty and accuracy in language with a less traditional delight in the sheer creative energy of new words and expressions.
Provocative, perceptive, and often hilarious, this is a book for everyone who cherishes the words we use.

Genres: Nonfiction, Language, History, Linguistics, United States

272 pages, Hardcover

First published May 13, 2008

About the author

Mark Abley is a Rhodes Scholar, a Guggenheim Fellow, a husband and a father of two. He grew up in Western Canada, spent several years in England, and has lived in the Montreal area since the early 1980s. His first love was poetry, and he has published four collections. But he is best known for his many books of nonfiction, notably Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages and The Organist: Fugues, Fatherhood, and a Fragile Mind.

His new book, Strange Bewildering Time: Istanbul to Kathmandu in the Last Year of the Hippie Trail, describes his travels across west and south Asia in the spring of 1978. Mark kept detailed journals during his three-month journey, allowing him to recreate his experiences from the standpoint of a much older man.

In 2022 Mark was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Saskatchewan for his contributions to the literary community.

Reviews

[Olga Godim · Rating 5 out of 5]

When we read, we do things impossible in our mundane existence, go places we can’t reach by public transportation. We fly among the stars, dance at Regency balls, or follow a canny detective in her search for a killer. We travel between the pages. With the guidance of Mark Abley, my reading journey into his book encompassed the past and the future and spanned across all the continents except Antarctica. I took a trip to the realm of English language.

According to Abley’s book, English is changing, and the process is irreversible. Like a living being, charming and aggressive, English eagerly absorbs new words and ideas from millions who speak it. It discards obsolete formulas, plays with new possibilities, and sprouts young offshoots in every region of the globe. The author revels in his tongue’s overwhelming life force and its roarific mobility. You don’t know the word? Read the book.

Some people are terrified by those changes. Grammarians want the language to remain proper and predictable, abiding by its rules. Like parents who want their child to stay out of trouble, these traditionalists are bound to be disappointed. The language doesn’t belong to them anymore. English is on the move, growing, running free, breaking artificial shackles and expanding boundaries. Not for the noobs, Abley insists. You don’t know the word? Read the book.

In the exploding “verbal revolution”, the place of honor belongs to teenagers and the Internet. Young trailblazers fearlessly create new words online. Although their cant in cell phone messages might seem gibberish to some purists, Abley luxuriates in it. And he passes his enthusiasm to the readers. After reading his book, even an old broad like me wants to exclaim foshizzle! You don’t know the word? Read the book.

Abley cites many other sources of new words: TV series, immigrants, typing mistakes, translations, and fiction writers. Five centuries ago, Shakespeare launched quite a few new words, and the tradition continues. The word that everyone uses today – cyberspace – was coined in 1984 by science fiction writer William Gibson. The word womlu was born on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s online forum. You don’t know the word? Read the book.

As the dominant language of the Web, English grows deep roots in Asia, Africa, and Europe. In many countries, especially in Asia, fluency in English brings prestige and power. But as the language penetrates the local lingo, it mutates and adapts, becoming Singlish in Singapore, Manglish in Malaysia, and Spanglish in Southern California. Words of different tongues infiltrate both ways. Languages become porous, digesting each other and creating something resembling a universal tongue. And we all are the creators.

A real connoisseur, Abley relishes every new word he comes in contact with and he shares his delight with the readers. Besides being highly educational, the book is deliriously funny. I read a lot, but I don’t remember laughing as hard as I did reading about the mischievous escapades of the English language. Do you know about the anecdotal relationship between the expression ‘couch potato’, OED, and the British Potato Council? No? Read the book.

If you’re a lover of words, a gourmet of quirky sentences, a curious student of slang, or a zealot of grammar, read the book.

[Sarah White · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't say I disliked this book, but nor can I really say I liked it. I liked the concept, just not the practice. The author took us on trips to visit a variety of cultures, explaining along the way how their languages have impacted English and vice versa. He states that he values clarity of language. He says that the words used are not so important as the message they get across. However, his sentences were frequently convoluted and difficult to comprehend. Sometimes a sentence took several readings because of its structure, not its vocabulary. This may be a me problem, and in many instances it probably is. Regardless, I found it frustrating. I do understand, though, that he wanted his writing to be linguistically interesting.

I do believe that, when it was not necessary in the slightest, Mr. Abley employed far too many parenthetical elements. This--admittedly a small issue--is my greatest complaint. He turned sentences (growing longer and longer with every apositive and interjection) into apparent nesting dolls.

Hi, Holly.

[Julian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is something I would easily reread and highly recommend to anyone who enjoys etymology and the evolution of language. It is entirely about English but not just English. It is about how English is both the most widely spoken secondary language and changing into something very different from English. Abley attempts to answer the very interesting question of which language will replace English as the de facto language of the world with an equally interesting (but perhaps more complicated) answer: English, as spoken by those who acquire it as a secondary language; International English, if you will. He uses Singlish (Singapore English-check out Talking Cock), as his example, which is a slang which could possibly be compared to the phenomenon of African American Vernacular English. It has its own regularity of grammar and usage and is spoken by a vast majority of the population in Singapore. It's a compelling example and it is a topic, in general, that I would like to read more about (I expect to in my linguistic studies).
I really enjoyed this book. The writing is good, humourous and light. Fun and informative. Although when it comes to language I can read style manuals with relish!

[Jessica Bebenek · Rating 1 out of 5]

Actually ended up abandoning this book.

I was reading it for my thesis (reading about the shifting use of language(s) between cultures), but it really fell short of what I was hoping for. The first chapter was interesting, but not really deep enough of a study as what I was looking for. The following chapters each focus very specifically (too specifically) on a culture and how its use of language is shifting, but then never really ends up pulling all of these overviews together to form a purpose.

Overall, this book collects interesting facts, but then never really does much with them.

[Eustacia Tan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s always gratifying to see your country in a book, especially since Singapore is so small! But it also makes sense that in a book about how English as a language is changing, Singlish (Singapore English) appears as a case study (although, sadly, Abley missed the chance to talk about Phua Chu Kang, a local sitcom that once was called out for its use of Singlish).

Singlish is basically a mixture of English, various Chinese dialects, Malay, and Tamil that’s made to be as compact as possible. Here are two word (or word + particle) combinations that all have different meanings but are also somewhat untranslatable into proper English:

Can lah
Can meh
Can leh
Can hor
Can ah

The Prodigal Tongue explores the evolution of the English language in various domains, looking at how words are created, how English is spoken in various countries, and how it’s being changed by the internet. A short summary of this book might be: English is changed as it comes into contact with other languages and cultures while also changing other languages and cultures.

As Abley points out in the first chapter, English has always been changing. One example he raises is how the word “comfort” originally referred to strengthening and supporting. As a result, the case studies of how English is changing are more like a snapshot of what things were like when the book was written rather than an explanation of the present and a prediction of the future. As someone living in 2022, a lot of what the book, which was published in 2008, was talking about sounded really dated to me, especially in the chapter on modern Japanese slang because that was quite different from the ways my classmates spoke.

In a way, The Prodigal Tongue feels like a predecessor to Gretchen Mcculloch’s book Because Internet, which focused on the way the internet was affecting language. If you’re interested in modern English language history, The Prodigal Tongue may be something that you’re interested in! I don’t think a lot of the explanations of “modern slang” are relevant today, but it’s interesting to see how things have been changing in the last few decades.

This review was first posted at Eustea Reads

[M. Apple · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love reading about the history of the English language. As a language educator, I love learning and teaching about the variety of Englishs around the world, and I'm very aware of the false "native/non-native" dichotomy, the role technology plays in changing language, and so forth.

This is the first time I simply could not finish a book on English.

It's not that the writing itself was bad or poorly written. It's that it had no point. The chapters meander all over creation like an unedited blog. There is no driving thread to hold the topics together. After the first two chapters, I started wondering, "What is the point of all this?" And the only answer I could come up with was "He thinks English is cool."

This book was extremely disappointing. Other books in the series, by David Crystal, for example, are very well written and eminently entertaining. But this writer was so boring and had so little to say, I just had to throw in the towel in the end.

Don't waste your money. There are plenty other books about language change and social trends. Give this one a miss.

[Blair Conrad · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book – I like the discussions of the changes English has undergone and is undergoing and the way it’s affecting other languages. (And all the pop culture references I’m familiar with were fun.)
I especially enjoyed the section on Japan(ese), as I’ve recently returned from there and had been wondering about all the English-derived words that existed, “Really, they had no word for ‘milk’? Or ‘green’?”).
Unfortunately, I didn’t find that the book was formed in such a way as to provide a guided message – it was a little looser, almost (but not quite) an amorphous mass of information about language change. I think a more obvious structure or message would’ve pushed this from a good book to a great one.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A compact survey of trends in English, this book is perhaps more interesting to read four years after it was published a lot of the cutting edge stuff has changed and I could think about it with more distance. Some of the technology is new--he doesn't cover Google Translate's ability to translate a whole web page for you--but I liked how he structures the book (chapters hit on technology, English as international common language, black English before and after hip hop). If you're feeling stressed by change he doesn't exactly give you comfort but the advice to speak as clear as you can and people will probably understand you isn't bad.

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a letdown. It had some really interesting information (and yes, reading it several years after its publication made some of it a bit funny--it was fun seeing the slang we used when I was in high school as the "modern slang"), but the way it was written made it so hard to absorb much of it. I'm not even sure what it was--I think the author had trouble figuring out if this was a casual conversation or a more formal, text-book style book. It was too dense and too meandering.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Abley's exploration of how the world's languages have been transformed and will continue to be as a result of global trade, immigration, and the Internet, as well as how language changes people. Abley covers blogging, novels, dictionary makers, web-speak, and talks about what the future holds for each. My graduate program was in intercultural linguistics and this was right up my alley. Though the book is primarily about English as a shifting and influential global language (and, most interestingly, how it is incorporated into other vocabularies around the world), I learned so many fascinating facts about other languages and how we perceive other cultures as well as what we might expect in the future. Definitely worth a read.

"All sorts of borders are collapsing now: social, economic, artistic, linguistic. They can't keep up with the speed of our listening, of our speaking, of our singing, of our traveling. Borders could hardly be less relevant on teen-happy websites... Languages are merging."

"The combined influences of global business, media, politics, Hollywood and the Internet have an awesome linguistic power. They entail instant communication and instant comprehension a requirement that may prove strong enough to pull English back from the brink of schism. The Roman Empire did not have CNN or Microsoft at its disposal. For the moment, a rough balance appears to exist between the forces working to pull English apart and those laboring to keep it united. The language's long-term future depends on which tendency... proves stronger."

[Tim · Rating 1 out of 5]

As other reviewers have pointed out, this book doesn't know what it's about. It hops all over the place but goes nowhere, never developing any identifiable thesis, beyond something like "ain't English great!" Reader's Digest on speed. Crapola.

[Brent Johnson]

U nd 2 read this gr8 buk!

[Betty · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches from the Future of English by Mark Abley

Well-written and surprisingly up to date, this Canadian author has introduced how the dictionary is an ongoing work, never to be finished, as the English language appears to take handsprings of changes at any given mini-decade to produce new words and change those of the past. He smoothly takes us through the many adaptations of English as determined by countries around the world.

I found the historic asides of the many languages around the globe to be exceptionally interesting, especially the history of the Japanese language. I particularly enjoyed one of the comments about a current phrase in Japanese/English: "a new Japanese phrase meaning 'to visit Tokyo Disneyland,' nezumi shibaku, literally means 'to flog the mouse.'" Now, isn't that a logical translation? What else is Disneyland and the Disney empire doing but "flogging the mouse". Wonderful.

This is not only a book about the "takeover" of the English language but also delves into how we perceive other cultures in the world of today. Very differently from the past, I learned. The new English as spoken in other countries is often based on the music lyrics, computer technology, texting, slang, and many other cultural symbology. Yet, each country adds some part of its own language either as a tag-on or mixed in one sentence. Books and movies presenting the imagined future of the earth also come into play. Some from science-fiction, some from today's outlook on a probable future. The reader would not find it difficult to think of many words that were not in use as recently as 10 years ago, and this changes almost daily in our rapid communication of internet, blogs, texting, email, et al.

On the other hand, within the past 50 years many words have gone out of style or taken on entirely different meanings. Just try watching an old 1940s/50s movie! Even in this new century the same could be said. Some words stick, others just disappear or remain localized.

Personally, I found this book enjoyable and informative. It was entirely readable, not dry or academic. This book was written for anyone with an interest in how even language can change at home and abroad, and how much impact the English language now has globally. when I have.

[Ushan · Rating 3 out of 5]

After writing Spoken Here, Mark Abley got a Guggenheim Fellowship that enabled him to go around the world in search of the future of English. He goes to a Los Angeles shop that sells T-shirts that say "CHINGA TU MADRE" and underneath it in a smaller font "HAVE A NICE DAY", and "TU ERES UN PENDEJO" above "YOU ARE MY FRIEND". Hip-hop and its associated African American Vernacular English vocabulary spread from Senegal (where a popular rapper raps in English-influenced Wolof) to France (where a rapper of Senegalese descent raps about gangstas in the suburbs of Paris) to Australia. A Perth linguist says that older Australian Aborigines, if they think about North America at all, tend to identify with Native Americans, and teenagers identify more with African Americans; their emails are full of words such as "dogg" and expressions such as "wass up?" Singapore has an English-based creole called Singlish, which the city-state government tries hard to eradicate in favor of normative English. English is studied in Japan, but most Japanese don't learn it well, so Japanese T-shirts are full of mysterious Engrish: "Happy Endless Bivis", and so are Japanese shopfront signs: "EAT PARADISE". Conversely, "long time no see" and "no go" entered mainstream English from a Chinese-English pidgin; both phrases are calques from the Chinese. And of course, the Internet influences global English like nothing else: all your base are belong to us!

[Rick Edwards · Rating 3 out of 5]

Abley handles his subject ably, and often with sharp insight. He examines the interaction between English and other languages on a variety of frontiers -- the way Japanese has absorbed English words and used them to replace some traditional Japanese terms; the emergence in Singapore of "Singlish" as English, Malay, and Chinese form a new linguistic blend; and the pressure of technology, especially IT and Internet communications, on the vocabulary and shape of English. Sometimes he seems to lose focus, and one wants him to get to the point and move on. But, all in all, the book is richly informative on previous, present, and possible future transformations of the language in which so much of the modern world lives.

[Lisa Houlihan]

Tracing the history of "gay," Mark Abley says of a bit of Yeats ("They know Hamlet and Lear are gay" from "Lapis Lazuli") that the line could "evoke an unwanted image of certain actors." You know, that might be an unwonted take on the characters but it's not an undesirable one. Well, maybe I'd rather picture Laurence Olivier as Hamlet than as Lear.

In The Basque History of the World, Mark Kurlansky attributes "honcho" to Basque; Abley says it's Japanese. I think Kurlansky is wrong.

Abley says (210) that Philip K. Dick coined "kipple" in the same page he gives the origin of "robot" and "matrix." Am I supposed to know "kipple"?

Next up, his Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was aware that the English language was in a state of flux, that languages in general change and evolve, but this book was a revelation. I had no idea what a bubbling global language cauldron we are witnessing with the advent of global trade, mass immigration and the Internet.

A fascinating book.

Very likely this will one will find a place on our Read-alouds List... which it did as of July 9, 2018 when I finished reading the book aloud to Maggee. She liked it too. THE PRODIGAL TONGUE is book #32 on of our 2018 Read-alouds List.

This book led to me to several others including CLOUD ATLAS (which I read and am now reading aloud to Maggee), SNOW CRASH and A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ.

[Logan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting and informative, though not necessarily new, look at how the English language is being changed by technology and culture, and also the changes English is bringing to other languages around the world. Abley's findings are often frustrating, and sometimes heartbreaking, for language geeks—but change is a fact of life for any thriving language.

Anyway, this was a fun little adventure into English. I especially liked the chapter on English in Japan and the chapter on English in science fiction.

[Jouni · Rating 2 out of 5]

More than an actual book about the changes in (the English) language, The Prodigal Tongue is a collection of humourous, and, admittedly, entertaining linguistic anecdotes.

As for the actual informational value of the book, the author states in the introduction that language is in constant change; then he gives examples of said changes; then, in the conclusion, he concludes that language is changing. In other words, the book just plods on without any actual progression conclusions or scientific value. Ex nihilo nihil.

[Sara Phelps · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a hard one to rate. Quite slow in the beginning, the book contains a lot of interesting information and ideas about language. It reinforces the pertinent theme of our increasing intolerance for lack of connectivity and our addiction to information and mulitasking. His comments about current modes of reading (i.e., skimming) struck a chord with me, as did the topic of corporate nounspeak. The idea makes me want to change how I converse at work.

[Elizabeth K. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was decent, a descriptivist overview of realms where English is evolving by the minute, nicely grouped into thematic chapters (Asia, the internet, science fiction). It's REMARKABLE how his examples of current slang, current in 2008 when the book was published, already sound so clunky. I think it would be good for people who miss William Safire, although Abley isn't as acerbic.

[Arja Salafranca · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this lively, very readable book Abley takes a look at a number of possible futures for English – will it split off into a variety of dialects as happened with Latin and the Romance languages? Will the influence of technology and tech talk render the language all but unrecognisable in a few decades? Abley crosses the globe in pursuit of answers.

[Gabrielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay so I skipped a few chapters, but overall this book is interesting to read, if you want to learn more about language or the way English is used and misused and morphed around the world you will like it.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting look at the current state of the English language -- luckily it's not judgmental, nor does it poo-poo non-standard English. A decent read.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but nothing I had not already read in college.

[Asha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Readable and fascinating and not
snobby, I'm really enjoying it so far.